If I had known we were going on a 7 mile hike, I might not have gone. But I didn’t know and so I did it without thinking about it.

Kind of like how we sang together on a global scale because we didn’t know we couldn’t. ( See most recent prior post: #18 )

Our hike’s destination was the site of the former Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha river in Olympic National Park. Both the construction of the dam and its removal were thought to be impossible tasks, and yet each was accomplished.

There seems to be a pattern here, a lesson just out-of-sight. And it makes me think of the goodness of humans, our willingness to move into uncharted territory when we know it’s the right thing to do. Even when we think we can’t do it.

And how do we know what’s right?
Our bellies and bones tell us so.

Embedded as we are in the entirety of time that it’s taken for trillions of galaxies to exist, thousands upon thousands of planets to form along with the pivotal stars round which they spin, embedded as we are in this massive evolutionary journey, we humans learn by doing, by experimenting, by experiencing what works and what doesn’t. Though it’s taken a few thousand years for our species to develop the technology that allows us to “prove” the existence of trillions of galaxies, our ancestors 10,000 years and more ago may have known this truth, but they knew it intuitively, with intelligence beyond our limited array of modern senses.

Physiologically we haven’t changed that much since paleolithic times, so our cells remember, just as the land remembers its experience and holds it just out of sight…unless we tune in, open the doors of perception to non-ordinary reality and re-member, in the large sense of that word, bringing back to life all our members, our capacities that have been diminished by modernity.

So human goodness???

 I feel in my bones that humans yearn to belong to the world and to each other. We will do what it takes to bring beauty back, to bring harmony and resilience back. For me that’s one definition of “human goodness.” Once the decision was made to restore the Elwha River to its natural state, humans responded with generous support. Imagine how many of us it took to plant 400,000 native shrubs and trees to restore the decimated banks of the river, silted over by the lake behind the dam. Imagine the tolerance of the Forest Service when their compound, composed of many buildings, was suddenly inaccessible to vehicular traffic because the force of the freed water washed out the road, despite all the engineers attempts to prevent that. Imagine all the campers who obligingly changed plans when the campground was no longer accessible by car.

Humans are motivated by loving life experiences, sharing hard work, victories and losses, potlucks and singing and storytelling and laughter…
May we focus on our goodness and move toward the new era coming, moving toward that which we don’t know we can’t do, trusting the Universe has our backs!